Alt Car 2010: Where plug-in vehicles are finally for sale and the drives are smooth

Brammo Enertia at AltCar 2010 – Click above for high-res image gallery from the show

As we said, we were not able to make our annual pilgrimage to the Santa Monica Alt Car Expo last weekend. But that doesn't mean we didn't have friends there. Reader Gint Federas. was able to go for a few drives and shared a few pictures of the event. He also sent in the following report:

I test drove the Leaf, Volt, most of the fuel cell vehicles, and wasn't disappointed by any. The Volt's main battery died just as my test drive began. The range extender was much quieter than I thought – barely noticeable. The Leaf burned rubber accelerating, but the Volt was sluggish which I attribute to range extended mode. With the exception of the Monotracer, if there is a dashboard picture, I drove it.

BTW, Chevy only had one Volt for test drives, and cut the waiting list off at 60. I was #53 signing up at 10:30 a.m. By 4 p.m., most sign-ups were no-shows. If you were still there, you were allowed to drive the Volt.

Nissan was much better organized with at least 8 cars active on the test loop. Nissan's spokesman said they are traveling with 10 cars. I saw another Leaf behind the Auditorium that was quick charging (30 min to 80 pecent charge, DC). The quick charger was a biodiesel-fueled genset charging a battery pack that dumped charges directly DC to DC to the on-board pack. The car I drove had 63 miles on the trip odometer, with 31 miles charge remaining. The AC had been on all day as it was 93 and humid in LA on Friday.

You can see a lot of Gint's photos in the gallery below and more here.

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